Andy Fairweather Low

Back in the sixties Andy
Fairweather Low was a bone-fide chart-busting pop star. He played Top of the
Pops with Amen Corner and his face was on the bedroom walls of thousands of
teenage girls.

By the seventies this likeable
Welsh singer and guitarist enjoyed a
critically acclaimed but all too
brief solo career. Blasted out of business by punk rock, he became a hired hand
for some of the best in the business.

Which is why for the past quarter-of-a century the self-confessed “quiet
man of rock” has been making other
people’s music.

Now, after decades travelling
the world as a member of Eric Clapton, Roger Waters and Bill Wyman’s touring
bands, he is back on the road in his own right.

Leading a superbly tight four piece outfit, he
has kissed goodbye to limousines, five star hotels and concerts in stadiums and
arenas.

As he approaches his sixtieth
birthday he is getting back to basics, driving himself to gigs at small
theatres and clubs across the country.

He gave it a whirl last year
and was so excited by the reaction that he says: “After
40 years I’m doing exactly what I always wanted to do, playing my music to
people who want to hear it.”

This weekend finds Andy
playing two show in deepest Dorset - the
Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne, on Friday and the Barrelhouse Blues Club in
Sturminster Newton on Saturday.

“It’s great,” he told me.
“After so many years of playing in all these big, big
bands with three guitar players, two keyboard players, horn sections, girl
singers, entire orchestras. I’m really
enjoying playing with a small unit.”

With Andy on guitar and vocals,
his Eric Clapton band colleague Dave Bronze on bass, Dorset born sessionman
Paul Beavis on drums and Richared Dunn, a man who has played with everyone from Van Morrison to Johnny Cash, on
Hammond organ, it is quite a line-up.

“My role in all the jobs I’ve
had with other people is to play specific parts,” says Andy. “Now I get to
play and sing whatever I - and it’s very important that word I - whatever I
want.”

He admits there has been a
fairly drastic change in his on-the-road lifestyle but says he has no regrets
about swapping a globe-trotting gig schedule for shows that are often within
driving distance of home.

“When I was touring with Eric or Roger I got paid well, I
ate well, I slept well and travelled well. Now, standing at the front of the
stage each night, I don’t sleep too well and there are elements of worry about
selling tickets, how the throat is going to be and whether we can find our way
to the Travel Lodge, but you know at the same time it’s very, very rewarding.”

Where once there was a team of
tour managers there’s now sheet of dates
and the sat-nav on the dashboard. As for
the hotels he says simply: “I’ve stayed
in some very classy places in my time but
I don’t care how good a hotel is, I don’t care how good the menu is, there’s
only one place you want to be when you’ve been on the road for six months. The fact is I want to spend
more time with my grandson.”

The current 35 date tour which
includes a performance at Glastonbury, is accompanied by the release, on June
2, of The Very Best Of Andy Fairweather Low – The Low Rider, a CD that surveys
his entire career.

It features 14 of his best known tracks,
mixing re-recorded versions of his biggest hits with some of the most popular
live numbers that he plays on tour.

It has been an extraordinary
career for the boy from Cardiff who first found fame with numbers like Bend Me
Shape Me, Hello Susie, (If Paradise Is) Half As Nice and of course the amazing
Gin House Blues.

His solo career spawned
favorites like Wide Eyed and Legless, Spider Jiving and La Booga Rooga while
his session work included not only long running employment with Clapton, Waters
and Wyman’s bands but stints with everyone
from Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix to The Who, George Harrison and BB King.

Throughout it all he stuck to what he knew and
now in a high-tech world awash with
gadgets and gimmics he seems both surprised and grateful that his old-fashioned
skills are still considered cutting edge.

“I play an amp and a valve and I have a lead
that goes into a guitar and that’s it. I never bought into the tricks. God
knows how I’ve survived in a world where equipment has changed so much but
somehow I have.”

*Andy Fairweather Low and his and band play The
Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne, on Friday (May 30) and The Barrelhouse Blues Club at the Exchange,
Sturminster Newton on Saturday (May 31).